Seems people are struggling to grasp this. I hope this helps.
(Screenshot from a Crewe Alexandra forum)
As you can see, the member with the most posts has a more significant rank (
First Team), rather than his counterpart with (
Trialist). Ranks are there just to show how many posts you have. Lets just pretend that on this forum, people with the
Trialist rank have between 0-100 posts, then move to
Substitute which could be 101-250 posts, then to
First Team which could be 251-500 posts. This is similar to here. The more posts you have the more positive your rank is.
As for the stars, well you get one added when your rank changes as your post count increases.